ABSTRACT
The notion of a pan-dialectal grammar was put forward most forcefully by C. J. Bailey in 1969, at the Los Angeles Conference on Historical Linguistics in the Light of Generative Grammar. Phenomena which seem at first glance to represent change turn out to be continuations of long-standing traditions not reported by grammarians. This chapter considers one of the most interesting and mysterious examples of divergence in English syntax. Syntactic change is an elusive process as compared to sound change. The basic situation is that a sentence in which any more carries the main grammatical meaning without support is rare, but in a slightly larger context, quite natural for the grammar to produce. To the extent that one recognizes a connection between any and any more, it appears that this sentence violates the categorical rule of negative attraction.
